Open Grave

Synopsis

A man wakes up in a pit of dead bodies with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Fleeing the scene, he breaks into a nearby house and is met at gunpoint by a group of terrified strangers, all suffering from memory loss.

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The thing with the piece of paper was absurd. "I must write down this very important piece of information. Yes, we will be together and I could just say it to you, but I feel better that I wrote it down. What could go wrong?"

It's telling that its normally seasoned cast (Copley, Kretschmann, and Ho) look like awful actors with the limp dialogue, banal action, and apathetic mystery trying to support its gimmicky plot line. A film like Rodrigo Cortes' Buried would be gimmicky if it wasn't pulled off with prime suspense and tension, much like Hitchcock's concepts. Open Grave never transcends its idea into something special.

It starts as an intriguing mystery and actually pays off in a clever way that makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, it lacks the interesting characters and dialogue to make its solid premise something great. Still, I've never seen a movie that opens with everyone having amnesia and trying to figure out what's going on actually lead to an intelligent conclusion, so I have to give it points for that.